Overview

Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration tool that handles the complexities of running containerized applications. You can run Kubernetes applications with Kubernetes Engine—a Google Cloud computing service that offers many different customizations and integrations. In this lab, you will get some practical experience with Kubernetes by learning how to set up a MongoDB database with a StatefulSet. Running a stateful application (a database) on a stateless service (container) may sound contradictory. However, after getting hands-on practice with this lab you will quickly see how that’s not the case. In fact, by using a few open-source tools you will see how Kubernetes and stateless services can go hand-in-hand.

Set a Compute Zone

Throughout this lab, we will be using the gcloud command line tool to provision our services. Before we can create our Kubernetes cluster, we will need to set a compute zone so that the virtual machines in our cluster are all created in the same region. We can do this using the gcloud config set command—run the following in your cloud shell to set your zone to us-central1-f:

gcloud config set compute/zone us-central1-f

Create a new Cluster

Now that our zone is set, we will create a new cluster of containers. Run the following command to instantiate a cluster named hello-world:

gcloud container clusters create hello-world

This command creates a new cluster with three nodes, or virtual machines (the default). You can configure this command with additional flags to change the number of nodes, the default permissions, and other variables. See the documentation for more details.

Launching the cluster may take a few minutes. Once it’s up, you should receive a similar output:

NAME         Location       MATER_VERSION   MASTER_IP       ...
hello-world  us-central1-f  1.9.7-gke.3     35.184.131.251  ...

Setting up

Now that we have our cluster up and running, it’s time to integrate it with MongoDB. We will be using a replica set so that our data is highly available and redundant—a must for running production applications. To get set up, we need to do the following:

• Download the MongoDB replica set/sidecar (or utility container in our cluster).
• Instantiate a StorageClass.
• Instantiate a headless service.
• Instantiate a StatefulSet.

Run the following command to clone the MongoDB/Kubernetes replica set from the Github repository:

git clone https://github.com/rajeevkghosh/mongo-k8s-sidecar.git

Once it’s cloned, navigate to the StatefulSet directory with the following command:

cd mongo-k8s-sidecar/example/StatefulSet/

Once you have verified that the files have been downloaded and that you’re in the right directory, let’s go ahead and create a Kubernetes StorageClass.

Create the StorageClass

A StorageClass tells Kubernetes what kind of storage you want to use for database nodes. On the Google Cloud, you have a couple of storage choices: SSDs and hard disks.

If you take a look inside the StatefulSet directory (you can do this by running the ls command), you will see SSD and HDD configuration files for both Azure and Google Cloud. Run the following command to take a look at the googlecloud_ssd.yaml file:

cat googlecloud_ssd.yaml

Output:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: fast
provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd
parameters:
  type: pd-ssd

This configuration creates a new StorageClass called “fast” that is backed by SSD volumes.

Run the following command to deploy the StorageClass:

kubectl apply -f googlecloud_ssd.yaml

Now that our StorageClass is configured, our StatefulSet can now request a volume that will automatically be created.

Deploying the Headless Service and StatefulSet

Find and inspect the files

Before we dive into what headless service and StatefulSets are, let’s open up the configuration file (mongo-statefulset.yaml) where they are both housed in.

vi mongo-statefulset.yaml

You should receive the following output (without the pointers to the Headless Service and StatefulSet content):

apiVersion: v1   <-----------   Headless Service configuration
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: mongo
  labels:
    name: mongo
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 27017
    targetPort: 27017
  clusterIP: None
  selector:
    role: mongo
---
apiVersion: apps/v1    <------- StatefulSet configuration
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
  name: mongo
spec:
  serviceName: "mongo"
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      role: mongo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        role: mongo
        environment: test
    spec:
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 10
      containers:
        - name: mongo
          image: mongo
          command:
            - mongod
            - "--replSet"
            - rs0
            - "--smallfiles"
            - "--noprealloc"
          ports:
            - containerPort: 27017
          volumeMounts:
            - name: mongo-persistent-storage
              mountPath: /data/db
        - name: mongo-sidecar
          image: cvallance/mongo-k8s-sidecar
          env:
            - name: MONGO_SIDECAR_POD_LABELS
              value: "role=mongo,environment=test"
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
      name: mongo-persistent-storage
      annotations:
        volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class: "fast"
    spec:
      accessModes: [ "ReadWriteOnce" ]
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 100Gi

Remove the following flags from the file (lines 49 and 50):

- "--smallfiles"
- "--noprealloc"

Ensure that this section of your file looks like the following:

containers:
        - name: mongo
          image: mongo
          command:
            - mongod
            - "--replSet"
            - rs0
          ports:
            - containerPort: 27017
          volumeMounts:
            - name: mongo-persistent-storage
              mountPath: /data/db

Save and Exit the editor.

Headless service: overview

The first section of mongo-statefulset.yaml refers to a headless service. In Kubernetes terms, a service describes policies or rules for accessing specific pods. In brief, a headless service is one that doesn’t prescribe load balancing. When combined with StatefulSets, this will give us individual DNSs to access our pods, and in turn a way to connect to all of our MongoDB nodes individually. In the yaml file, you can make sure that the service is headless by verifying that the clusterIP field is set to None.

StatefulSet: overview

The StatefulSet configuration is the second section of mongo-statefulset.yaml. This is the bread and butter of the application: it’s the workload that runs MongoDB and what orchestrates your Kubernetes resources. Referencing the yaml file, we see that the first section describes the StatefulSet object. Then, we move into the Metadata section, where labels and the number of replicas are specified.

Next comes the pod spec. The terminationGracePeriodSeconds is used to gracefully shutdown the pod when you scale down the number of replicas. Then the configurations for the two containers are shown. The first one runs MongoDB with command line flags that configure the replica set name. It also mounts the persistent storage volume to /data/db: the location where MongoDB saves its data. The second container runs the sidecar. This sidecar container will configure the MongoDB replica set automatically. As mentioned earlier, a “sidecar” is a helper container that helps the main container run its jobs and tasks.

Finally, there is the volumeClaimTemplates. This is what talks to the StorageClass we created before to provision the volume. It provisions a 100 GB disk for each MongoDB replica.

Deploy Headless Service and the StatefulSet

Now that we have a basic understanding of what a headless service and StatefulSet are, let’s go ahead and deploy them. Since the two are packaged in mongo-statefulset.yaml, we can run the following comand to run both of them:

kubectl apply -f mongo-statefulset.yaml

You should receive the following output:

service "mongo" created
statefulset "mongo" created

Connect to the MongoDB Replica Set

Now that we have a cluster running and our replica set deployed, let’s go ahead and connect to it.

Wait for the MongoDB replica set to be fully deployed

Kubernetes StatefulSets deploys each pod sequentially. It waits for the MongoDB replica set member to fully boot up and create the backing disk before starting the next member. Run the following command to view and confirm that all three members are up:

kubectl get statefulset

Output – all three members are up.

NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   AGE
mongo     3         3         3m

Initiating and Viewing the MongoDB replica set

At this point, you should have three pods created in your cluster. These correspond to the three nodes in your MongoDB replica set. Run this command to view:

kubectl get pods

(Output):

NAME        READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mongo-0     2/2       Running   0          3m
mongo-1     2/2       Running   0          3m
mongo-2     2/2       Running   0          3m

Wait for all three members to be created before moving on.

Connect to the first replica set member:

kubectl exec -ti mongo-0 mongo

You now have a REPL environment connected to the MongoDB .

Let’s instantiate the replica set with a default configuration by running the rs.initiate() command:

rs.initiate()

Print the replica set configuration; run the rs.conf() command:

rs.conf()

This outputs the details for the current member of replica set rs0. In this lab you see only one member. To get details of all members you need to expose the replica set through additional services like nodeport or load balancer.

rs0:OTHER> rs.conf()
{
        "_id" : "rs0",
        "version" : 1,
        "protocolVersion" : NumberLong(1),
        "writeConcernMajorityJournalDefault" : true,
        "members" : [
                {
                        "_id" : 0,
                        "host" : "localhost:27017",
                        "arbiterOnly" : false,
                        "buildIndexes" : true,
                        "hidden" : false,
                        "priority" : 1,
                        "tags" : {
                        },
                        "slaveDelay" : NumberLong(0),
                        "votes" : 1
                }
        ],
        "settings" : {
                "chainingAllowed" : true,
                "heartbeatIntervalMillis" : 2000,
                "heartbeatTimeoutSecs" : 10,
                "electionTimeoutMillis" : 10000,
                "catchUpTimeoutMillis" : -1,
                "catchUpTakeoverDelayMillis" : 30000,
                "getLastErrorModes" : {
                },
                "getLastErrorDefaults" : {
                        "w" : 1,
                        "wtimeout" : 0
                },
                "replicaSetId" : ObjectId("5c526b6501fa2d29fc65c48c")
        }
}

Type “exit” and press enter to quit the REPL.

Scaling the MongoDB replica set

A big advantage of Kubernetes and StatefulSets is that you can scale the number of MongoDB Replicas up and down with a single command!

To scale up the number of replica set members from 3 to 5, run this command:

kubectl scale --replicas=5 statefulset mongo

In a few minutes, there will be 5 MongoDB pods. Run this command to view them:

kubectl get pods

Your output should look like this:

NAME      READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mongo-0   2/2       Running   0          41m
mongo-1   2/2       Running   0          39m
mongo-2   2/2       Running   0          37m
mongo-3   2/2       Running   0          4m
mongo-4   2/2       Running   0          2m

To scale down the number of replica set members from 5 back to 3, run this command:

kubectl scale --replicas=3 statefulset mongo

In a few seconds, there are 3 MongoDB pods. Run this command to view:

kubectl get pods

Your output should look like this:

NAME      READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mongo-0   2/2       Running   0          41m
mongo-1   2/2       Running   0          39m
mongo-2   2/2       Running   0          37m

Clean up

Because you are working in Qwiklabs, when you end the lab all your resources and your project will be cleaned up and discarded on your behalf. But we want to show you how to clean up resources yourself to save on cost and to be a good cloud citizen when you are in your own environment.

To clean up the deployed resources, run the following commands to delete the StatefulSet, Headless Service, and the provisioned volumes.

Delete the StatefulSet:

kubectl delete statefulset mongo

Delete the service:

kubectl delete svc mongo

Delete the volumes:

kubectl delete pvc -l role=mongo

Finally, you can delete the test cluster:

gcloud container clusters delete "hello-world"

Press Y then Enter to continue deleting the test cluster.

Congratulations!

Kubernetes Engine provides a powerful and flexible way to run containers on Google Cloud. StatefulSets let you run stateful workloads like databases on Kubernetes.

What we’ve covered

• Creating a MongoDB replica set with Kubernetes StatefulSets
• Connecting to the MongoDB replica set
• Scaling the replica set

Happy Learning !!!